My Salvadoran Crocodile Dundee

[Today is Spanish Friday but I won’t be translating my entire post to Spanish today. Instead I will offer some vocabulary and phrase translations of the Spanish that appears within the dialogue at the end of the post.]

“Is that a snake?”

It was too late to be going anywhere, but Carlos and I were in the car, pulling out of the driveway. The plan was to sneak out and get ice cream without the kids or Suegra tagging along. The headlights lit up something black and twisted by the side of the road near our mailbox.

“Nene, that’s just trash or something.”
“No.” He put the car in park and opened the door, “that’s a snake.”

I got out too, rolling my eyes. That big, black, twisted thing was just a trash bag or something. Where did he think we lived? The Amazon Rainforest? As if a snake that big would just be hanging out near our mailbox.

We walked up to the object. I carelessly walked closer to it than Carlos. The “piece of trash” slithered.

“Oh my God,” I said, backing up and standing behind Carlos, “it’s a snake!”
“I know,” he said, “I need a flashlight, I can’t see it well.” He started back towards the house, leaving me and the snake to entertain each other.

The snake started to move towards our house. I picked up a big rock and threw it in his path, but missed. I threw another rock which landed right in front of his nose. The snake reared back and opened his little mouth. I stood my ground, armed with another rock, freaked out but determined not to let it anywhere near the house, until Carlos returned with a flashlight and a broom, the kids and Suegra trailing behind.

Carlos uncoiled the snake with the broom and it became clear that it was at least 4 feet long and, venomous or not, aggressive. The original plan was to carry the snake on the broom over to the nearby woods but the snake did not cooperate, and instead made every attempt to come at us or go towards our house.

Suegra kept telling Carlos to throw it in the road so the passing cars could run over it.
“Ay! Dejala, hijo,” she pleaded, “Las culebras pueden tirar veneno a tus ojos y vas a quedar ciego!” (She must have seen an episode about spitting cobras on National Geographic en español.)

“I’m going to have to kill it,” Carlos said to me. We didn’t want to, especially not knowing if it was even dangerous, but we didn’t want to take the chance of it getting into our house and hurting the kids.

“Traigame algo por matarla,” Carlos said to no one in particular.

Suegra and our youngest son ran off for the house.

Suegra returned first… with a weed whacker.

“Mamá,” Carlos said, exasperated. “Cómo voy a matarla con eso?”

Our youngest son, an animal lover, came out of the house with the white bucket that Suegra uses for washing her chones.

“Can we just capture it?” he asked, holding out the bucket.
“Cipote!” she said, grabbing it from him, “No! Con mi cumbo, no!”

“Get the machete,” Carlos said. I went to our closet and got the machete.

Carlos chops the head off

Doing away with the body, which was still moving

Head of the snake on the tip of the machete

All of the commotion attracted a crowd of gringo kids who had been playing flashlight tag or something in the neighbor’s yard.

“Dude, what’s going on?” one of the gringo kids said to my older son, seeing Carlos with the machete, looking like some sort of Salvadoran Crocodile Dundee.

“My Dad killed a snake,” my older son answered, his voice calm, as if this was a normal activity for our family.

I really wanted Carlos to ask me if I was alright after the whole snake thing went down so I could be silly and use a line from the movie, but he was too busy putting everything back in the shed that Suegra had thrown all over the yard when she had pulled out the weed whacker.

…but since it’s my blog, I’m going to pretend that he turned to me as he re-sheathed the machete.

Ay Amiga! I´m so glad you have your Salvadoran Crocodile Dundee with you!!!
Ok, this post is great on so many levels, but let me just start with the fact that you too were sneaking out of the house to go get some ice cream! I LOOOOVED THAT! jajajajaja!!!!!
Did you ever find out what kind of snake was it? ¡Qué miedo!
Great post amiga, GREAT!!!!

Love this post, Tracy! Brought back so many great memories for me. Growing up in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas it was very common for us to find snakes in the yard on any given day, especially during the summer when it was hot, and my dad and mom both must have killed a dozen of them each during our eight years there, along with a whole other assortment of livestocks and pests… one time, we were even walking to get water and I didn’t pay attention to my mother’s warnings to step away from the path I was walking and I ended up stepping on a poisonous snake with my barefoot, lol. My mother reacted like you, with a rush of adrenaline and heroism and through me across the dirt road as fast as she could before the snake had a chance to wake up and try to bite me, lol. She hadn’t wanted to use her voice to warn me for fear of having the snake react faster and, well, I didn’t have any idea what she was doing with her hand signals… I thought she was trying to be funny, and I wasn’t happy with it because it was hot and we were carrying back gallons of drinking water to the house. My uncle actually liked to eat snake. It always made me sick to my stomach to look at it all rolled up without any skin in his refrigerator and nunca la he probado. Thanks for the memories, Hermana!

Another super funny episode in the life of Sra. López and her fam!! Thanks for the laughs, Trace! Although, I’m sure it wasn’t funny at all as it was happening. I deplore snakes and we have seen a few, of the garden variety, in our house. Not a happy moment!

funny, but scary! You and Carlos were both brave….I would have been scared standing out there by myself with it. Your MIL cracks me up again…a weed wacker. I somehow knew this was ending with a machete though.
I haven’t thought of Crocodile Dundee in a long time! Loved that scene, “Knife? That’s not a knife.” Hahaha. I wonder if my kids are old enough to see it yet?

Don't know if the kids are old enough to see Crocodile Dundee yet. I've tried to show the kids several movies out of nostalgia and have grossly misjudged the appropriateness many times. LOL. We used to watch some really non-PG things back then apparently – I just didn't realize it until my kids are staring wide-eyed at the screen.

Ay, Tracy! Mi familia ahorita cree que estoy loca porque no deje de reir mientras leia tu post. Tu suegra y el weed eater…jajajaja! Y me encanto tu difinicion de la palabra machete…big as knife. I wonder if every latin family has one. I know we do! I was waiting for one of the Gringo kids to say that the snake was his.

Tracy! I can’t believe it. I don’t mind pet snakes, but snakes out in the wild … no freaking way. *LOL* on the snake spitting venom and blinding you, I didn’t even know that was possible. BTW, tienes un marido bien valiente. Even with a machete. Geesh.

Hahahhahahaa! I love it! A weed wacker?! I’d love to have seen that. The Croc Dundee scene is also awesome. It would’ve been fun to say, and even more funny that likely you’d be the only one in your family to get the awesome joke/quote. Your Esposo is the best.